I found that help was much needed on all sides. The day after my arrival saw me installed at the hospital with an interpreter at my side. Here work usually lasted about three hours. My home was with Dr. and Mrs. Heron, who with warmest kindness had fitted up a sunny room for me. Here Dr. Heron and I had a joint dispensary, and here I was besieged at all hours by women desiring medical attention. I soon found that language study was continually interrupted very seriously by these applicants, who respected not times or seasons. I was of course called upon to visit patients in their homes, one of whom, the wife of the Chinese minister of state, Prince Uan (now a very prominent personage in Chinese matters), must be seen every day with an amount of ceremony which took not a little of my precious time. However, finding that others were being overworked, I consented to give two hours each day to teaching the little orphans arithmetic and English.
Of course we made slow progress, and floundered not a little when the teacher knew no Korean, and the pupils no English. This institution had the unqualified favor of the king, and except the hospital was the first institution in Korea which illustrated the loving-kindness of the Lord. We hoped it might become a successful school, where souls might be saved, ere they had been steeped for years in vice, and the first steps taken in the preparation of evangelists and preachers. Our duty and chief desire was of course to acquire the language, but this was much interrupted by this other work. As we stood there, such a little company among these dying millions, we could not realize that hours of preparation then meant doubled usefulness in years to come, and so time and energy, that should have been spent mainly in study, were poured out in hospital, dispensary and schools.
The new missionaries of these later days are put in a language incubator as soon as they arrive and kept there till they emerge full-fledged linguists, who have passed three searching examinations by the language committee of the missions. Then we sat down with an English-Chinese dictionary (most scholarly Koreans know a little Chinese), a Korean-French dictionary, a French grammar and a Korean reader with a small English primer on Korean, the Gospel of Mark and a Korean catechism for text books. We were presented to a Korean gentleman knowing not one syllable of English, or the first principles of the constructions of any language on earth, or even the parts of speech, and without the glimmering of an idea as to the best methods or any method of teaching, who yet was called, probably ironically, “a teacher,” from whom we were expected to pump with all diligence such information on the language as he was able to bestow. With scanty knowledge of French, more than rusty from long disuse, I labored and floundered, trying now this plan, now that, with continual interruptions and discouragements.
Before I could more than stammer a few sentences I was called upon to begin religious teaching, so undertook a Sunday school service with the little boys, using a catechism which I could not yet translate, but (knowing the sounds) could hear the boys recite. Soon after I began holding a Bible class with a few women, with the aid of a little native boy who had learned English and a former sorceress who could read the Chinese Scriptures. This woman would read the chapter, we all united in the Lord’s prayer and in singing the few hymns then translated, and I talked to the women through the medium of my little interpreter. I struggled and stumbled. The women were patient and polite, but to our Father it must have looked the spoiled tangled patchwork of the child who wished to help, with ignorant, untaught hands, and made a loving botch of it all.
Perhaps right here a few words about the Korean religions may be in place. Confucianism, Buddhism and Taouism all hold a sort of sway over the natives, and yet all have lost, to a great extent, the influence they once had. The majority have very little faith in any religion. Confucianism, otherwise a mere philosophical system of morals, has the strongest hold upon the people in the laws it enjoins for ancestor worship. This custom, enforced by the strongest and most widespread superstitions in the minds of the Koreans, binds them with fetters stronger than iron. If ancestors are not worshiped with most punctilious regard to every smallest detail of the law, dire calamities will befall, from the wrath of irate and neglected spirits. The servitude thus compelled is hard and wearisome, but not one jot or tittle must be omitted, and woe to the wretch who, embracing another doctrine, fails to perform these rites. He or she is looked upon as more than a traitor to home and friends, false to the most sacred obligations. Buddhism has fallen low, until very lately its priests were forbidden to enter the capital, and they rank next to the slayer of cattle, the lowest in the land.
A few Buddhist temples are maintained at government expense or by endowment, and women and children, and all the more ignorant, still worship and believe, to some extent. The same classes also worship and fear an infinite number of all sorts of evil deities—gods or demons, who infest earth, air and sea, gods of various diseases, and all trades; these in common with Satan himself must be propitiated with prayers and sacrifices, beating of drums, ringing of bells and other ceremonials too numerous to mention.
Over all other objects of worship, they believe, is the great Heavens, the personification of the visible heavens, who, as nearly as I can discover, is identical with the Baal referred to in the Old Testament; but everywhere their faith waxes more and more feeble in these old worn-out superstitions. In many cases only respect for ancient customs and public opinion keeps them even in appearance to the outward forms of worship. They are as sheep without a shepherd, lost in the wilderness, “faint and hungry, and ready to die,” and so when the gospel comes, it finds many weary souls, ready to take Christ’s yoke upon them and find his rest.
And yet how hopeless looked the task we had before us in those days, a little company of scarce a dozen people, including our Methodist brethren, many of us able to stammer only a few words of the language as yet, attempting to introduce Christianity into a nation of fourteen or more millions of people, in the place of their long established religions; and beginning with a few poor farmers and old women. But the elements of success, the certainty of victory, lay in the divine nature of the religion, and in the Almighty God who sent us with it. This knowledge inspired us and this alone.
A few days after my arrival in Seoul a messenger came from the queen, to bid me welcome, and inquire if I had had a pleasant journey, and shortly after Mrs. Heron asked some of the queen’s attendants to meet me at luncheon. These women are not, as in other courts, ladies of high rank, for such could never, under Korean customs, endure the publicity of the palace, but are taken as children and young girls from the middle and lower classes, and entirely separated from all others, to the service of their majesties. They usually hold no rank, and are treated with respect, only on account of their relations to the royal family. They wear on all state occasions immense quantities of false hair, which gives them a peculiarly grotesque appearance; are much powdered and perfumed, with pencilled and shaven eyebrows; wear long flowing silken robes, gilded ornaments in their hair and at their waists; and present the sad spectacle of women whose very decorations seem only to add to and emphasize their painful uncomeliness.
